DataTorque revamaps Haiti’s tax collection system

Wellington based software company DataTorque in partnership with Canadian company C2D Services has secured a six year contract from the Government of Canada to produce a French language version of its RMS taxation management system and implement it for Haiti’s tax authority, the Direction Générale des Impôts.

The project covers three years of implementation and three years of post-implementation support. Global Affairs Canada provided funding for the project and the Canada Revenue Agency provided advisory support.

RMS is described as “a complete end-to-end solution that’s designed for emerging economies [that] brings together taxpayer information, transactions and communications into one user-friendly system, and provides an accurate single source of truth.”

DataTorque managing director, Bill Chatwin, said that, with 77 percent of Haiti’s population living below the poverty line, RMS would be key to a range of initiatives that could help to make a significant difference to the country’s development potential.

“The new system increases compliance, transparency and revenue by simplifying and streamlining the collection of domestic taxes,” Chatwin explained. “By making more tax revenue available to the Government, DataTorque’s RMS enables it to invest more in its citizens and infrastructure like schools and hospitals.”

He said that while DataTorque had previously supplied RMS in the Caribbean Haiti was its first Francophone project so it had partnered with C2D Services from Montreal to deliver the programme jointly.

“Working in a French-speaking country has resulted in the build of a new translation engine for DataTorque’s software, which can now also be used elsewhere around the world,” Chatwin said.

According to C2D Services the project covers the computerisation of 34 tax types, will initially be implemented in five tax centres and subsequently rolled out to all 135.

“In order to fully leverage the new system’s functionalities, all of the tax processes will undertake comprehensive business process reengineering,”XC2D said. “This modernisation of all processes will also be an opportunity for the Tax Department to introduce new practices, based on a client-centric approach.”

C2D added: “Additionally, a continuous training mechanism will be implemented to ensure the sustainability of the new processes and system, ahead of their deployment to the 135 tax centres across Haiti.”

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